Game 14: Villanova
Dec. 30, 2008
And so it begins.
When MU takes to the floor on Thursday afternoon against Villanova, it'll be the fourth and final go-round for Dominic James, Jerel McNeal and Wesley Matthews in the Big East Conference. It'll also be the first for coach Buzz Williams as head coach.
Williams recounted on Wednesday his memories of the Golden Eagles' 85-75 victory over the Wildcats at the Wachovia Center last season, a game in which Dominic James overcame a sprained ankle to hit 5 three-pointers and score 25 points to go along with six steals.
They included James' performance, being "squished" because of a lack of chairs on the sideline, and meeting Larry Brown the day before the game.
In doing his prep work for this game, Williams first went back to the tape from that particular matchup -- a routine he'll repeat for each of the Golden Eagles' opponents this season.
But having been a part of each of those games, and done the primary scouting report on a number of them, as an assistant to Tom Crean undoubtedly will give Williams a leg up in his first tour around the league as a head man.
"I think it helps in that at least I’ve been through it, and I was able to become somewhat additionally familiar with rosters, personnel and different coaching philosophies in regards to how teams wanted to play," he said. "So I think in a lot of ways it was very beneficial. Obviously when I was going through it I didn’t know it was going to turn into this, but you don’t ever work like that. You work to earn your day’s pay that day.
"So yeah, I think it’s beneficial. Whether it results in us winning a game, I don’t know about that. But it helps with familiarity."
Villanova, which is 1-2 against MU in the Big East, enters Thursday ranked 15th in the AP poll at 12-1. The Wildcats' lone loss was to Texas, 67-58, at the Jimmy V Classic on Dec. 9. Their best victory was probably against Big Five foe Saint Joseph's, 59-56, two days later.
Despite the lack of a true marquee victory, Villanova enters at No. 43 in the RPI. Compare that to MU, which enters at No. 19 -- fourth-highest for a Big East school.
For the past two seasons, the Wildcats' star has been guard Scottie Reynolds -- a player whose career path has been somewhat similar to Dominic James in that he was regarded most highly as a freshman.
While he's still averaging 14.2 points and 4.4 assists per game, it's been 6-foot-8 senior forward Dante Cunningham who's assumed the role of go-to guy this season -- a big departure from what's been a guard-dominated team since Jay Wright took over as coach.
Cunningham leads VIllanova in scoring at 16.9 points per game on 56.3% shooting, rebounding at 7.5, blocks at 1.2 and -- displaying his versatility -- steals at 1.8.
"He averaged 2.2 as a freshman, 8.7 as a sophomore, 10.4 as a junior and 16.9 right now as a senior. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that in my career, where one player without a redshirt year has continued to improve at that pace," said Williams of Wright. "I don’t know that their style of play necessarily has changed, but their priorities within their style of play have probably been tweaked."
Even still, Villanova is more than just a one-man show.
"Scottie Reynolds is a very talented, high-major player," said Williams. "Corey Fisher has his career high (Monday) night (23 points). Corey Stokes, 77 of his 90 shots entering (Monday) night were from three. He looks like Scotty Thurman and plays like him.
"I think they have a really talented team. But Cunningham has changed their priority because now they’re really hard to guard – not just at 1, 2, 3, but 1, 2, 3, 4. People discount (Antonio) Pena, and he gets work done also. Their starting is really, really good."
-- Never one for coach-speak, here's what Williams had to say when asked if he thought that his team was under the radar heading into conference play:
"I think we’re under the radar because I don’t think we’re that good," he said. "I think the teams that everybody’s talking about are the teams that deserve to be talked about. We won at North Carolina State last week, an ACC opponent, and they were 76-8 when we entered the gym since the building had been built in non-conference, and then we won by 39 on Sunday and somebody told me we dropped a spot in the polls. So that tells you what teams think of us.
"But that’s probably about right. How good are we, how good can we be? I think we have an opportunity to get better. I don’t think we’ve quite reached our ceiling. You want to be trending in that direction on Jan. 1."
Gotta love the honesty.
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